


Something A Boy Said

by SchweenWinchester



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Attempted Murder, Claustrophobia Warning, Gen, and his weird mommy issues, canon independent, dean winchester's weird codependency issues, survey says no, weird monsters, will i ever not set a fic in pennsylvania
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-06 00:34:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1837879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SchweenWinchester/pseuds/SchweenWinchester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why not do a little exploring, they said.  It'd be fun, they said.</p><p>Please do not publish this work elsewhere.  My intention is for it to remain AO3 exclusive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mid-March, and god, did it feel like it.  The wind bit through the spot where the driver's side window didn't quite roll up anymore, chilling the side of Dean's head just enough to be uncomfortable despite cranking the heat.  The plasticky rattling in the heater vent was just loud enough to set his teeth on edge, the muscle in his jaw twitching slightly as Sam scrolled the radio dial, looking for something, anything, that would come in over the static.

"Dude, there's nothing out here.  Why did we even come this way?  I'm sure the lineup on 80 would've cleared up eventually," Sam griped, slowly twisting the dial back down.

Dean said nothing, only cursing under his breath as the Impala bottomed out on a particularly rough pothole, her engine laboring as she crawled up a ridge.

Heading back to Bobby's had never been this joyless.

The hunt had gone well, all things considered.  Another werewolf, this time nobody Sam found attractive, and this time they'd dispatched it efficiently with no-one noticing.  Hopefully the corpse would be found before it started to stink.

The white-cold sun flared into Dean's eyes as the Impala topped the hill, revealing a series of some of the largest wind turbines he'd ever seen, their blades whipping just above the naked treeline.

"Jesus," murmured Sam, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a grin.  "Don't see that every day."

The Impala slowed to a stop as Dean pulled over, hopping out to stretch his legs after the long ride.

"Pennsylvania fuckin' _sucks_ ," he growled, stumbling slightly.  "Why do we keep ending up here?"

"Karma, probably.  You okay?"

"Yeah.  Stiff legs.  Shit, I gotta piss."

Sam nudged open the door, unfolding himself from the passenger seat as Dean shuffled off through the dead leaves and gravel towards the nearest turbine.

"Don't pee on government property, we've got enough problems as-is," he called, laughing.

Dean flipped him off over his shoulder as he hopped the chain-link fence.

"You're a fucking _terrier_ ," Sam hollered after him.  "Get out from there before we get caught!  Remember Redwood Park?"

Again, Dean paid him no mind, instead content to salute the shining white pillar of human progress in his own particular fashion.

Ah, well.  Sam stretched, his shirt riding up and exposing his belly to the sharp bite of the March breeze.  His breath fogged before him and was whisked away, the wind whipping suddenly over the hilltop and making him regret not wearing a thicker jacket.  He glanced up, squinting into the clear white-blue of the sky and sun and inhaling the crisp scent of frost and woodsmoke.  Someone had a fireplace going upwind.

_Where even are we?_

Normally he had a bad feeling about being lost, but this was relatively nice, and seemed like an okay place to be.  It was mom-and-pop diner country, dippy-eggs-with-a-side-of-scrapple country, helpful gas station attendant country, the kind of place you could still find a malt shop in the nearest town and eat like a king for under ten bucks.

Wholesome.

Obviously, Dean was a little less than pleased with it.  He preferred bars, seedy undergrounds that he blended into with practiced ease, whereas Sam stood out like a sore thumb, still a little too fresh-faced to pull off the bad motherfucker schtick.  But here, here he blended in, able to get by with good manners and a friendly smile while Dean tripped over his words and accidentally offended some housewife or another by flirting with her nubile young sorority daughter home from spring break.

He shook his head, realizing he'd zoned out and Dean was already back and hot to move on.

"You okay there, Sammy?"

"Hn?  Yeah.  Yeah, I'm fine, just kinda tired.  You know how far to the next town?"

Dean shrugged.  "Shouldn't be too far.  Saw a Sunoco sign not too far back, figure we can fuel up, grab lunch, be back on the road in an hour."

He gunned it, sending the Impala soaring down the road, dodging potholes and roadkill as they rode the ridge.  The sun flickered through the trees, blinding Sam slightly as he slid lower in the seat, never fully at ease with his brother's reckless driving.  He knew they'd be fine, but god for fucking bid a cop came along and caught them doing 93 in a 55.

They lucked out, however- Dean slowed as the road began to slope sharply downwards, curving into a valley.  The scent of woodsmoke grew steadily stronger.  Soon both Winchesters realized that smell was undercut with something else- something a little pungent, a little oily.

"The hell is that?"

"Dunno."

The valley opened up as they passed a church- an old white stucco Ukrainian Orthodox number that loomed from its perch on the hillside.  Something was... _off_ about the landscape.  There were small crossroads, leading into what looked like the layout of a town, but there were no buildings to speak of.  Dean slowed, stopping at an intersection, the stop sign totally superfluous in the emptiness of the valley.

"Well, this is weird."

The valley was almost devoid of trees, save for a few growing through and over what looked like old sidewalks.  To the right, they could see the bare hill of what looked like some kind of mine.  To the left, flatness.  Ahead, the rise of a hill climbing towards what looked like a graveyard, the stones askew and hunkered under strangely well-tended cedar trees.

Dean felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle as it stood on end.  It wasn't that he felt threatened, but something was definitely off here.

"It's like everything just up and disappeared," Sam said slowly.  "What the hell is this place?"

"Dunno, but I'm not sure I wanna find out."

They sat at the intersection for a few minutes, gawking out the window at the strange emptiness that surrounded them, for once left with nothing to say.  There wasn't much vegetation.  A hard winter had ensured that anyway, but this area seemed particularly dead.

"We gonna check this out?"

Dean sighed.  "Yeah.  Sure.  Not like we have anything else on our plate."

The car rumbled down a side street, and Dean parked it near what had been a fire hydrant, letting it idle as he and Sam both considered their situation.  They had nothing to go on save a bad feeling, which normally would be enough, but this time...

Sam finally pulled the trigger so to speak, swinging open the door and unfolding himself from the passenger seat, grabbing his coat from the back of the car.  Nothing momentous happened, save for some bird or another flushing from a sumac thicket.

A whole lot of nothing.

They were jumpy from the last hunt and a lack of sleep, probably, he reasoned, scuffing through some dead leaves as Dean joined him, unfolding the battered map of Pennsylvania that had been shoved into the glovebox last trip through the state.  There were garden walls, walkways, places that looked like the remnants of foundations.  Down another street he saw what was left of a concrete deer, its paint long gone along with its head.

"I got nothin'," Dean called, still leaning against the car.  "It's not on the map."

"Not like this is much of anything anyhow." Sam nudged at the base of a rusted stop sign with the toe of his boot.  "How about we check it out, see what's going on?  Looks like there might be something over there, I see a little smoke."

Indeed, up the hill there seemed to be a thin wisp of smoke, or steam or something, possibly from a house, that stood out stark against the crisp clearness of the March sky.

"Sure, I guess."  Dean's apprehension was palpable.  He eyed Sam warily, shoving the map back into the car and killing the engine.  "Just gonna state for the record I'd rather just come back some other time."

The hill was steeper than it looked, and the skewed sidewalk didn't make the walk any easier.  They slogged through dead leaves and tripped over heaved pavers, Dean bitching under his breath while Sam's long stride left him behind, his shoulders hunched as a brisk breeze nipped through his jacket.  There was literally nothing here, he told himself as he watched his brother jog ahead.  He had no reason to be freaked out.  Sure, he was tense.  He was always tense.  Mostly he just wanted to collapse into a bed, have a beer, ogle his favorite skin rags and fall asleep after a quick and quiet jerkoff, and he was feeling tetchy about the delay.  These side trips always sucked, always meant precisely jack and shit, and ate their time and money like a bad ex girlfriend.

"Looks like it's down this way."  Sam waited for his brother to catch up to him before taking a left down a side street.  "Jesus, how many cemeteries does this place need?"

Indeed, there was another cemetery just visible through the brush, almost a mirror of the one across the main drag, but somewhat smaller and a little less well-kept.

"Fucking creepy if you ask me," Dean spat.  He glanced over the landscape, noting a crudely-lettered sign nailed to a tree that only stated "FIRE" with an arrow pointing in the direction they were headed.

They soon entered a clearing, the cemetery to their right, and a scrubby grassy gravelly area to their left, with smoke rising thin from behind the birches that had grown up in the sandy dirt.  A few tire tracks led through, which they followed, entering another clearing where two rusted pipes jutted from the ground.  This was the source of the smoke; a faint wisp rose from each pipe and drifted with the breeze to dissipate over the valley they'd parked in.

"Weird.  Wonder what that's from?"

Dean squinted into the sun as Sam approached the pipes.  Fucking nothing as far as the eye could see, save for that creepy church and those wind turbines.  No birds sang, nothing seemed to interrupt the freakish quietness they'd found themselves in.

Sam, meanwhile, reached out to touch the nearest pipe, leaning over the dented cage of chain-link that had once kept people out of arm's reach of it.  The metal was rusty and surprisingly warm to the touch, hinting at some kind of heat source deep below the dust and dried out bluestem beneath their feet.  The breeze changed direction briefly, bringing the pungent smell of smoke to him.

"Smells like Bobby's furnace," he mused, kicking at the base of the pipe.  "Coal fire."

"Oh yeah?"

"Seems like."

Dean accepted the answer without question.  Coal fire, sure.  He scuffed his shoes in the dusty earth, tugging his jacket a little closer.  Fucking freaky is what it was.  Still, Sam wanted to explore, so Dean had an obligation to follow along, at least until he got bored and headed back to the car to putz with the laptop.

They pushed through the brush in the empty lot behind the pipes, Sam grabbing the back of Dean's jacket as they nearly slid down a shale slope.  It looked like a disused garbage dump, old enough that pull-tab beer cans were still visible in the pile among the other metal and plastic and pieces of old dishes and bottles.

"Careful," Sam warned.  "Remember how bad tetanus shots suck."

Dean snorted, a little resentful of Sam's mothering, but stepped back from the edge of the slope all the same.  He spat, straightening up as he peered down the hill.

"It's all charred down there," he muttered.  "Looks like they had a trash burn a while back."

"Maybe."  Sam fiddled ineffectually with his phone, distracted.  No reception, no nothing- the mountains blocked it all out, leaving them stranded until they left the valley.  He shook his hair out of his eyes and glanced back to his brother.  "Want to check out the graveyard?"

Dean finally began to relax, starting to feel the tension easing out of his neck and shoulders.  "Yeah, sure.  Which one?"

"Start with the closest one, work our way back to the car?"

"Sounds good.  Lead on, I'll catch up."

Sam beamed at his brother, glad to spend a little time just exploring for no damn reason, fucking around in the ass-end of nowhere just _because._  He hopped down the wooded side of the bank back toward the pipes, following some faint ATV tracks he hadn't seen the first time.

Dean watched him go, smiling faintly.  No matter what, Sam was still that dipshit kid he'd looked after, even under the maturity, stubble, and big fancy Stanford vocabulary he'd picked up somewhere along the line, not that he used it much anymore save to bullshit their way through particularly ornery interviews.  Sam would always be that obnoxious little twerp, at least to Dean, and knowing just how much hell the poor kid had been through since Dean had picked him back up made him hate himself a little bit.  Nobody deserved that shit.

Whatever.  Dean glanced back down into the trash pile.  Once in a blue moon he'd scrounged bits and pieces from old bottle dumps to sell to antique shops for a little extra cash between stealing peoples' credit cards, and this seemed to be as good a place as any.  He could see the butt-end of some kind of crock sticking out of the leaves and dirt.  Forty bucks at least, and that'd go a long way towards keeping the Impala's tank filled.  And hell, the right old beer bottle could pay for lunch.

Gingerly, he took his first step down the slope, teeth bared as he concentrated on not falling on his ass.  He made it a few feet, but the slate chunks beneath his feet were all too willing to go leaping off into the blue at the first hint of gravity, and he made it the last ten or so feet sliding on his ass with his jeans shredding on the sharp stone.

He took a few moments to collect himself at the bottom.  He was bleeding a little, not enough to really be concerned with, but one rock had nailed him just right on the ankle to warrant a band-aid.  Ah, well.  He was filthy, too- the soil down in the pit was black and looked like it was mostly coal dust and granules.

Fucking Pennsylvania and its bullshit dirt.

Dean daintily plucked at a bottle near where he'd landed.  Broken.  Damn.  Oh well, it was one of many, and the crock was nearly within reach.  A good one, too, had a little blue salt glazing visible.  He hauled himself to his feet and picked his way through the trash.  Thankfully, it was all far too old to have anything gross left, save for that godawful dirt that was already making its way down into his shoes.

He nearly tripped grabbing at the crock, but managed to stay upright as he hauled it out of the mire.  Score.  It was intact, it had a thing on it in blue, it was old.  Probably could weasel more than usual out of some lady big into that country primitive shit if he played his cards right and smiled pretty.

Dean was so enamored of his find he didn't notice the ground falling away beneath him before the darkness and heat swallowed him whole.


	2. Chapter 2

Black and heat and stink surrounded Dean as he came to, his eyes screaming with needling pain like someone had poured battery acid into them. He could hardly draw breath, the air scraping down his throat into his lungs, thick as oatmeal and about as much fun to breathe. He could feel wetness on his hand, probably cut from that fucking crock smashing when he landed.

Hell. He was in hell.

His gut turned as he sat up, blinking and squinting into the blackness. There was nothing to see in the slightest, so he closed his eyes again to relieve the pain, relying on touch to get himself upright.

His back ached, his everything ached as he reached out to find a wall. Was he in a sinkhole, or was this some kind of cave system, or what? Could he escape? How far had he fallen? All this and more whirled round in his skull as he collected himself.

Sammy. Oh man, Sammy was gonna be so pissed.

Dean stood, finally, growling and muttering oaths. The air was even thicker up at head height, and he gagged on a breath, falling back to his knees.

Shit. This was not a good place to be.

He scrabbled for his lighter, desperate for some kind of visual input, hoping more than anything that the ceiling was just above his head where he could jump up and climb his way out. Then he and Sam were getting out of here, and they'd never take anything but Route 80 through this hellish state as long as they lived.

The flame flickered into being, simultaneously dashing his hopes and giving him new ones. The ceiling was high enough he couldn't see it, but there were tunnels he could fit through, and one of them led upwards at a climbable angle. Tight squeeze, looked like, but fuck, anything was an improvement over staying down here and dying miserably. May as well die miserably trying to get out.

Slowly, painfully, he began to climb. Each movement made his muscles and joints sing out in agony, and the rough rock under his hands and knees didn't help in the least. Nor did the heat, which ate away at him with every moment. Sweat stung his eyes and the cuts he'd sustained. There wasn't much he could do, really, but climb and pray that maybe, just maybe, he'd find his way out of here.

Dying in the dark wasn't how Dean wanted to go.

Up, up he crawled. Each movement was made of pain and hate, but he soldiered on as the passage grew narrower and narrower, the air turning thicker the farther he climbed. Sweat formed rivers down his face and body and stuck his shirt to his chest, making an already uncomfortable trek nigh unbearable. The heat made his lungs feel as if they were melting away. Somewhere far below, he could hear a rumble, fairly sure that it was flames, fire, devouring and consuming the earth he crawled through.

Soon, he had to dig. The passage was too close for him to move forward any more, shutting in around his shoulders.

"Shit," he choked out, pausing to rest and pick the dirt from his nails. The bleeding had mostly stopped, but his hand felt grungy and swollen. Probably getting nice and infected, knowing his luck.

"Shit," he repeated, and leaned back against the wall of the passage.

Maybe it would be better to just give in.

No, he reminded himself. Sammy. He had to get back to Sammy and take care of his car. He had obligations, dammit.

Dean took a few more deep breaths before he began to scrape away at the dirt and stone again, spitting out pebbles and filth as they fell into his face. There was no point in fighting to keep his eyes open- he'd just get blinded in the dark. He scrabbled and dug, feeling the sweat slither down the crack of his ass and chafe his taint. God, this was hell.

It was only a few more feet of this before his nails scraped against something too solid to dig through, something blocking his way.

"Shit," he croaked, his eyes squeezed shut as he pressed his palm against the cool surface.

Something sparked in his brain. Cool. Outside had been downright cold; this had to be important.

The surface against his hand did not give.

He sucked in another breath. Asphalt. This was asphalt. He was under a road and this was asphalt and he was less than three inches to freedom.

And the asphalt did not give.

Dean felt the humiliating sting of tears threaten to overwhelm him as he slumped helplessly in his tunnel. Now he really knew how hell felt, being able to taste freedom but not able to reach it, so close he could almost feel the breeze on his face, but he was trapped underneath a fucking road and didn't have the energy to dig anymore.

He was going to die in the most shitty way imaginable.

Slowly, painfully, he began to turn around, bracing his back against the wall as he began to kick weakly at the asphalt.

Kick. Kick.

How long had he been down here? Minutes? Hours? Days? He wasn't sure. It was hard to tell, and he'd been too busy trying to get out to notice if he fell asleep in the tunnel for a few minutes.

Kick.

He pulled off his jacket; the heat was getting to him.

Kick. Kick.

Had the asphalt yielded a little at the last kick? No, he was just tired. Nothing was moving.

Again, he collapsed, letting out a hoarse scream of frustration. He needed water. He needed air. The cloying darkness was too much and all he wanted was just the slightest beam of light to reach him.

_You're not gonna make it,_ some evil little voice deep down in his brain whispered. _You can't do it. You're tired, hungry, dehydrated, and you're gonna die down here three inches from freedom._

"Shut up," he rasped. "Shut up."

_You're worm food, kid._

His mouth was dry, his tongue feeling like a slab of cardboard thunking against his teeth. He could feel the cut on his hand pulsing with heat and dirt, the sweat burning hard on the raw wound, and it made him about want to gnaw the damn thing off if it didn't mean just opening up more room for an infection.

_Worm food_ , the voice wheedled, and Dean swore and spat into the darkness.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

He started up again, slower this time, placing each one more deliberately. Had he been stomping down, it would have been easy, and he could have had a helping hand from gravity and his own weight, but lying in a slanty little tunnel kicking up with nothing to brace against was wearing him down.

Kick. Kick.

His head lolled back, throat working as he choked on the thick air in the tunnel. It was so... it felt...

Kick. Kick.

Kick.

_You're fucked,_ said the voice.

"Fuck you," was his response as he aimed a few weak kicks at the asphalt. "Ff..."

Kick.

...kick.

......kick.

Dean took as deep a breath as he could. It felt like hot lava sliding down his throat, but he forced his lungs to accept it, made himself swallow it down and keep breathing. He focused on the dull throb of his cut hand. The pain, at least, let him know he still had a shot at survival. Once it stopped hurting, he was screwed.

He forced another kick, but it had barely any force behind it, glancing off the rough underside of the asphalt.

Fuck.

Slowly, his eyes slid open. The screaming burn came back immediately, but he was past caring, grateful as his world narrowed down to nothing but the agony in his eyes. At least  it was a change from the hand.

It took a few minutes for him to comprehend what he saw.

Light.

Not much, but enough that he could almost make out the texture of the gravelly dirt a few inches from his face.

There was light.

He was fairly certain he was hallucinating, that this was the end, but everything still hurt like a bitch, reassuringly enough. Slowly, he forced himself to turn again, so he faced the asphalt head-on.

Down in a little corner, there was the slightest pinprick of light shining through, bright enough that it hurt.

If he could have cried, he would have. Instead, he let out a raspy croak of joy, scrabbling at the dirt in that corner, feeling it fall away under his nails and a cool rush of air sweep down past him as the hole got bigger. He drank it down desperately, coughing and wheezing as the evil air from the cave was replaced by something more wholesome. It hurt. By god, did it hurt, but feeling the sandy scrape of his throat eased with some cool, slightly damp air was worth the pain.

Dean pressed his face to the hole, breathing greedily. He spat the dirt and ick that had fallen into his mouth. Air had never felt so valuble before. God, and it tasted so clean in comparison- he hadn't realized how filthy the cave air had been until he tasted the breeze from outside.

He began to scrabble again, clearing out the dirt and rocks and forcing his way through. It was narrow- it seemed there was a crack in the pavement- but he was bound and determined to get his sorry ass out into the open and out of the dark hell he'd spent god knows how long in. First one arm, then the shoulder. Now he shoved against the hole, forcing his way out.

He strained, growling under his breath as the dirt and asphalt slowly gave way. Soon his head was out, and then the other shoulder. Then the arm. He was bleeding, scraped against the gravel chips that made up the roadbed, but freedom was so desperately close that he ignored the pain.

With a little more effort, he hauled himself out of the dirt, crawling his way out and lying on the cool surface of the road, chest heaving with effort. Everything hurt.

But he was free.

He peeled his eyes open, the raw sting of them soothed by the cooler air. It wasn't the bone-chilling cold he'd felt that morning with Sammy, but it was a damn sight better than the cave. The day had clouded over, and some kind of queer fog had rolled in, bathing him and the world around him in the lightest of mists. The weird, faintly oily scent still hung in the air.

Slowly, he forced himself up to sit, taking in his surroundings. As he'd suspected, he was sitting on a road, next to a frankly enormous crack that slowly spilled dirty-smelling smoke out into the sky. It was a highway, once- but the road had heaved and buckled, rendering it useless. Trees and brush grew from the median, trash had been dumped on the side of the road, and graffiti coated the asphalt. Above him, the sun vaguely glimmered silvery through the mist and clouds and smoke.

He glanced uphill, back towards where he thought he'd come from. The faint wisp of smoke from the pipes near where he'd fell could be seen in the distance, over the treeline and the tops of the houses and church up above.

Houses?

When Dean and Sam had been wandering the town, there had been no houses. Nor had there been a church.

He rubbed his eyes, swearing under his breath. Where the hell was he? How far had he crawled and dug?

Still, houses meant safety, meant help, meant he could get a ride back to wherever it was he'd been, meet up with Sammy and get the fuck out of here. Maybe get a hot meal on their way out, if he got lucky and played his cards right.

He hauled himself up to his feet laboriously, almost too tired to stand, and began making his way uphill to the town.


	3. Chapter 3

The slog uphill towards town was relatively easy, all things considered. The road had heaved alarmingly, leaving twenty-foot rises in places and large cracks in others, but as long Dean stayed near the median it wasn't too terribly hazardous going. He was only about a half-mile out of town at most. The worst part was the incline, and the unsettling feeling that he was somewhere far, far from where he'd started. He couldn't be that far, though- sure the crawl had _felt_ long, but at most he'd gone a mile, right?

He crested the hill, now close enough to see the whole town laid out before him. There wasn't much to speak of, to be honest. The houses were row houses, now deteriorating worn and greyed wood, splotched with smoke smudge up their sides in places, windows warped and doors off hinges, roofs caving in as they leaned precariously against one another. Caution tape trailed its faded worn yellow spiderwebs around each property, chain-link blocking off the places where sinkholes had gaped wide and swallowed down what was left of the yards. The closest thing to a car he saw was a sad, twisted bike frame, still chained to a skewed fencepost, its wheels missing and blue paint chipping in the weather.

So much for his hopes of a ride out of here.

Still, there was the option of shelter and maybe some first-aid shit someone had left behind. An abandoned house was better than no house at all, and Dean was in no position to be choosy. There were roofs, there were walls, and who cared if it wasn't the Ritz?

As he trudged his way down a side street, the skies began to open up, spitting down a dirty drizzle that matted his hair to his scalp. It occurred to him he'd left his jacket down in the hole, but damned if he was going back to get it right now, not with the way he felt. Instead, he was hunting for some shelter that didn't seem to be falling in on itself. Wouldn't have been too hard, except the fog was growing pea-soup thick, the oily smell heavy in the air.

He slipped down an alley, footsteps thudding awkward into the muffling fog. The houses rose tall and narrow on either side of him. For a moment he almost thought he heard someone else's footsteps.

It was only when he stopped to listen that he realized just how alone he was. No sound reached him save for the soft rush of gently falling rain, not even the slightest bird or passing car.

His heartbeat loud in his ears, he headed for the end of the alley, back to the main drag.

"Hello?"

His voice was thick and harsh in the air, barely recognizable after the long hours in the hole. He coughed, then called again.

"Anyone out here? Hello?"

The fog was thick enough it killed any echo, leaving him lost and alone in the slightly grimy mist. His guts knotted.

Where'd everybody go?

Where was Sam?

Where was _he?_

He trudged his way back to the main street, the hairs on his neck prickling. This place gave him a case of the screaming meemees, and had he not been so tired, he would have booked it out of town as fast as he could and prayed that a truck somewhere would take pity on him.

Instead, he steeled himself to enter one of the better-looking houses, limping his way up the steps and trying the door. It swung open a few inches and stopped, stuck on rusted hinges that hung weird from years of disuse. He shoved against them, forcing an angry shriek from the metal as the door slid open wide enough for him to squeeze through if he sucked in his stomach and thought skinny thoughts.

The mist had penetrated into the house, probably from a busted window or two. It had been a nice place, once, with well-loved furnishings and what had probably been a very tidy kitchen, and a hallway that had a rogue's gallery of faded and mold-eaten photographs of the people who'd lived there. Now everything had the faint fuzzy veneer of dust over it, with the obvious spoor of animals that had rummaged through looking for food or nesting material littering the floor and counterspace. The air stunk of burnt something and mouldering carpet, a lung-clogging wetness that left a sour film on his tongue he couldn't get rid of. He gagged on his first breath, and his second, but by the third and fourth he'd pushed back the bilious taste at the back of his throat long enough to soldier on in search of something he could use.

Most of the food was nothing more than a dry bug-chewed smear in the fridge with a peppering of mouse and roach shit, but he found a few cans of food hiding in a cupboard that were only slightly past their expiration date and an old backpack that seemed to be in okay shape. Beggars couldn't be choosers, and Dean was more than happy to scarf down cold baked beans if it meant he'd keep moving longer. He found a can opener as well, and stood in the kitchen contentedly devouring the beans and another tin of Spaghetti-Os, though the congealed tomato sauce tasted far worse than he'd remembered as a kid.

The kitchen also yielded a serviceable chef's knife with only a few spots of rust on the blade. He'd whet it on a stone later, bring back its edge. Knives were handy, and his gun had gone missing somewhere along the line down underground.

Dean paused.

Skittering, but it sounded like mice, rats, or maybe a squirrel in the walls. Gross, but nothing that concerned him overmuch. It was to be expected in run-down dumps like this. He let himself breathe again, going back to ransacking the house looking for anything of use. A couple jugs of water, a first-aid kit. A canvas barn coat that was only a little too big but had been relatively expensive when new. He pulled it on, then removed it- the air in here was weirdly warm, making the moistness that much more disgusting. Swampy, he thought. Warm enough to make you sweat, but too wet for it to evaporate off.

The skittering came again, and this time he ignored it, clomping upstairs. The burned smell grew stronger, but the place didn't look too fire-damaged beyond a faint singeing at the windows and somewhat blackened ceilings. He supposed the fire outside had caused this, and he was just getting closer to a window, but it didn't quite smell like the oily fog from outside. It was strange, a little meatier, kind of... sour.

The sound grew louder- place must have had one hell of a rat infestation, or maybe a few raccoons. Possum at the worst; those bastards were nasty and Dean hated running into them. He deliberately stomped down the hall, hoping to scare the animal away. Last thing he wanted was a terrified furry thing with rabies trying to take him down.

It was only as something sharp bit into the meat of his right shoulder that he realized just how big a mistake ignoring the noise had been.

He roared, spinning and throwing a wild punch into the darkness as a few more of the _things_ grabbed at his flesh. Fish-hooks, yanking and tugging, the barbs chewing into his flesh like teeth. He clawed at the pain, screaming, his fingers tangling in something that felt like strands of hair as the hooks tried their damned best to pull him upwards. The cloying reek of charred meat beat him down with the stink of death and flame and burned hair filling his lungs. Dean retched as fought the thing, one fist landing as it hauled him towards the ceiling. The creature let out a gulping croak at that, its voice as much a ruin as its body. He still couldn't see what had hold of him, could only make out the faint silhouette of something humanoid as more and more hooks ate at his skin and clothes, biting into his arms and chest, worming their way deeper and deeper into him and feeling like fire. He fought hard, kicking and punching in blind terror as he hung helpless from the thing's long hair.

What made him scream, what _really scared the shit out of him_ , was when he saw the pale, familiar dead-blue of the thing's eyes peering at him through the filthy blond hair and blackened flesh. It croaked softly at him, pulling him close in an almost loving, intimate gesture, its rotten breath rasping on his face-

-he slashed at it with his knife-

-the hooks retracted at that, tearing agonizing lines in his skin but leaving him weak on the floor while the thing retreated to safety like a frightened spider; he gagged again, stumbling scared and sweating into the darkness as the faint, feminine silhouette skittered across the ceiling, away from its would-be prey.


End file.
